Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 05, 2020

02/05 Links Pt2: European Funding to Terror-Linked NGOs Exposed in Comprehensive Report; How the Soviets promoted openly antisemitic anti-Zionism

From Ian:

European Funding to Terror-Linked NGOs Exposed in Comprehensive Report

Eight European-funded Palestinian NGOs have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a US-designated terrorist group, according to a new report.

Palestinian NGOs Addameer, Al-Dameer, Defense for Children International–Palestine, Health Work Committees, Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), Union of Health Work Committees and Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees were all identified by Jerusalem-based research institute NGO Monitor in a report released last week as having extensive ties to the PFLP.

“Over 70 current and former staff, board members and general assembly members, as well as senior management and founders at these NGOs have direct ties to the PFLP, designated as a terror group by the US, EU, Canada, Israel and others,” said the report.

“A number of them are employed in financial positions at the European-supported NGOs, raising questions about oversight and aid diversion,” it continued.

“This is part of a wide-ranging network used by the terror group to gain legitimacy by operating under the façade of civil society,” the report added.

The report details millions of dollars in funding to these NGOs from government sponsors including the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, France, Ireland, Norway and Belgium, with additional support from the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and UNICEF.

It also identified five members of the European-funded NGOs, including an accountant at UAWC, who were indicted in December in connection with the terrorist attack in Israel in August that killed 17-year-old Rina Shnerb.

According to professor Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor’s president and founder, European support for select Palestinian and Israeli NGOs began in the mid-1990s, with several European Union and member state officials using the support to increase their influence.

After ‘Post’ report, German MP to quit BDS NGO if it does not reject BDS

Following a recent Jerusalem Post report, German politician Olaf in der Beek on Wednesday confirmed a letter in which he threatened to resign from the German-Palestinian Society, a hardcore BDS organization targeting Israel, if the group does not reject the “antisemitic” pressure campaign.

“My letter to the president of the German-Palestinian Society proves my clear stance against antisemitism and the BDS movement. If the German-Palestinian Society does not distance itself from the BDS campaign, I will leave it,” the Free Democratic Party (FDP) MP told the Post.

The Post first reported Wednesday on in der Beek’s membership in the German-Palestinian Society. Numerous Post queries sent to the president of the Society Nazih Musharbash and all members of the executive board of the organization were not returned. The Post asked Musharbash if he planned to reject BDS in to the letter.

The Post first exposed a group of German MPs who are members of the German-Palestinian Society’s advisory board. Some of the most hardcore anti-Israel MPs in the Bundestag are members of the board. Take the example of Christine Buchholz, an MP for the German Left Party, who has defended the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah in their violent terrorism war against the Jewish state.

Other members of the Society include Social Democratic MP Aydan Özogus and Green Party MP Omid Nouripour, the latter of whom co-sponsored a parliamentary initiative in 2013 to punish Jewish products from the West Bank with a labeling system. The Post has sent press queries to the Green Party and Social Democrats regarding their members’ roles in the society.

How the Soviets promoted openly antisemitic anti-Zionism

In this column in January 2017, I discussed some research done on archived KGB documents by noted Israeli investigative journalist and author Ronen Bergman. Basically, Bergman showed that during the Cold War, Soviet efforts to support the Arab war on Israel and spread extreme propaganda demonising Israel and Zionism were not simply cynical efforts to gain Arab support and damage the interests of US allies.

The documents suggest KGB leaders were sincere believers in the worst sort of antisemitic conspiracy theories, including believing in the authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, openly speaking of the “global Jewish conspiracy”, and insisting Zionists were secretly behind anything negative affecting Soviet interests, such as the increase in US-USSR tensions following the election of Ronald Reagan as US President in 1980.

As I also noted, Soviet propaganda lies behind many of the extreme claims about Israel and Zionism found on the international left today – Zionism as a uniquely evil form of imperialism and colonialism; claims that Zionists both collaborated with the Nazis and exhibit behaviour similar to Nazism; beliefs that Zionists and the “Jewish Lobby” control Washington and other capitals, the media, and international finance, etc.

Now the American blogger “Elder of Ziyon” (a tongue-in-cheek nom de guerre) has uncovered some new details about how these Soviet-promoted racist beliefs were disseminated. He notes a recent column in a Jordanian newspaper by anti-Zionist writer Marwan Soudah in which Soudah recalls the importance in Arab intellectual circles in 1970, of a “book written by the martyr of thought and the word, Yuri Ivanov, entitled ‘Beware of Zionism!’. …. I remember that these books were distributed in Amman for free and on a large scale to the pioneers of the Soviet Cultural Centre…”

The Ivanov book in question, called in English Caution: Zionism!, was one of the most seminal and widely distributed works of official Soviet anti-Israel propaganda.

And as Elder of Ziyon demonstrates through extensive quotes, it went beyond spreading the usual claims about Zionism being “a tool and agent of imperialism”; a form of colonialism and racism deploying “fascist methods” which is also able to censor the international media, and engaging in endless atrocities including “widespread” use of “paid hirelings to organise the ‘elimination’ of people refusing to serve the Zionist interests.”

Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers fights hatred and antisemitism on campus in the Bay Area, so I was surprised when I tried to share a recent piece on Facebook, Glorifying Jew Killers at Cal, and got this error message, instead:

Your message couldn't be sent because it includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive.

There was, of course, nothing abusive about this piece, except for the fact that it describes a display in the Berkeley Student Union that is intolerably abusive to Jewish students. The display consists of a series of photos and captions celebrating terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands. While the display was largely met with indifference by the student body and UC Berkeley administrators, some Jews decided to fight back, by adding context to the display, with explanatory notes.

Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers next refers us to a passionate response by student Maya Reuven in the Daily Cal student newspaper, ASUC should condemn Bears for Palestine’s display. Here, Reuven describes the actual deeds of the terrorists depicted in that display. How Rasmea Odeh bombed and killed two Jewish students shopping for groceries. The way Fatima Bernawi tried to blow up a movie theater in downtown Jerusalem. The fact that Leila Khaled was involved in more than one hijacking attempt.

The student writer asks why Bears for Palestine, in our current climate of antisemitism, in the wake of Poway, Tree of Life, and Jersey City, could not instead laud activists for coexistence and peace. People like, for instance, Bassam Eid. These are pertinent questions that are worthy of our consideration.

Questions that should not be shut down by Facebook playing Big Brother.

We know very well what happened here. Those who celebrate the Jew-killers reported Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers to the powers that be at Facebook. The report was accepted at face value, and no one bothered to look further. Or perhaps they looked further and hate Israel and the Jews, so decided to use their power at Facebook to shut down someone who fights for Israel and against hatred.

In my search for some way to work around this unjust decision, I then attempted to share the homepage of Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers: http://proisraelbaybloggers.blogspot.com/ and received this error message:

You can't share this link

proisraelbaybloggers.blogspot.com

Your post couldn't be shared, because this link goes against our Community Standards

If you think this doesn't go against our Community Standards let us know.

I duly clicked the “let us know” link and in the box provided, explained that Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers, far from being abusive, is a good website that is fighting against hatred and antisemitism. I sent off my comment and received a generic thanks:

Thanks for providing feedback about this experience.

In other words, “We’ll probably never read what you took the time to write us, but we know it makes you feel good to vent. You’re welcome.”

Not quite ready to give up on Facebook as a reasonable entity (Ha!), I decided to click on the link to “Learn more about what happens when you’re blocked or your content is removed.”

Here, I was led to an explanation of blocking, how long it lasts, and a lot of blah, blah, blah, about appropriate behavior on Facebook and how one might improve in order to be acceptable in future. Below was a series of boxes to click. I decided on “This solution doesn’t work,” and left a comment:

“Anyone who hates you personally or who disagrees with your politics can report your content as abusive, when it isn't, as a way to punish and hurt you and you have absolutely no recourse against this decision. There is no appeals system. It's actually a hateful policy that allows abuse to flourish in the Facebook community. This policy silences voices and shuts down freedom of speech.”

I clicked submit and my comment disappeared. In its stead, was a short message:

Thanks! Your feedback helps improve this answer for everyone.

I had gone as far as I could go. I could only hope that the ban on Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers lasts only 30 days, as Facebook’s explanation on blocked content suggests. But we all know that if someone wants to silence them once more, all they have to do is report the website again, and Facebook offers its users no recourse for appeal.

Several years ago, I decided to hold a one-day ban of Facebook, until they shut down a certain antisemitic page (the name of the page was something like "Kill the Jews"). I had thousands of people join the event, but when Facebook caved in and shut down the antisemitic page, I deleted the event.

Can you guess what happened next? Facebook restored the antisemitic page the very next day.

Many of us hate Facebook and use it anyway. Because the alternatives, for instance Twitter, Gab, and MeWe, just don’t give us the same satisfaction. At some point, however, the injustice of Facebook policies, and the lack of recourse to appropriate solutions may just drive us over the edge, and make us leave en masse.

Facebook is, on the other hand, such a monolith, that I wouldn’t suggest you hold your breath.

UPDATE: Btsalmo suggests that as many people as possible fill out a report at Facebook (see: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/571927962827151) stating that Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers (http://proisraelbaybloggers.blogspot.com/) and all content there, is safe and not abusive.

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Eradicating malaria from Palestine was another Zionist colonialist plot!

After I posted about the 1934 economic survey of Palestine that showed that Jewish investment had brought great benefit to the Arabs of the region, including controlling malaria, I was shown a remarkable pair of maps.

One showed where the major malaria-infested lands of Palestine were as of 1920, according to a British report.

I found a similar map from 1925:

The other showed where Jews had bought land in Palestine as of 1944 (blue=JNF, green=privately owned):

The two maps are remarkably similar.

The conclusion is that Jews bought the worst swamp lands, drained them and made them into usable, arable areas, to the benefits of everyone.

It took until 1968, but Israel was the first nation in Asia to eradicate malaria completely.

If you hate Israel, though, this can be considered an evil colonialist plot.

The book "Healing the Land and the Nation: Malaria and the Zionist Project in Palestine, 1920-1947"
by Sandra M. Sufian (2007) says that the swamps that were infested with malaria-spreading mosquitoes were in fact considered sacred, therapeutic pools to rural Palestinian Arabs:

Just two competing narratives. Who is to say that the Jewish conception of swamps as spreading disease is the correct one? Maybe they were really holy, healing swamps as the Arabs say. Draining them was just another example of oppression.

This review of the book, published in academic journal H-Levant, lays out the thesis that the entire malaria-clearing project was nothing more than a Zionist colonialist plot:

According to Sufian, the Zionist leadership, like the Mandate government, tried to manage the health of the Palestinian Arabs as though they were part of the natural environment. Diseases from the “natives” might be transmitted to the colonial authorities or the Zionist settlers and so should be managed through official public health policies. The Zionists imported European and U.S. medical technologies and foreign capital to restore the land to what was in their eyes its original state, with little concern for those who had long made their living from it. The Zionist settlers had no sense of the national rights of the Palestinian Arabs, who they believed had no real attachment to the land. Like European settlers elsewhere, the Zionists considered the indigenous population primitive and backward. The land was a swampy wasteland inhabited by an unproductive people. In this, the Zionists were merely drawing upon racial views of non-European, indigenous populations then prevalent among colonialists. As Sufian points out, Zionists, like other Europeans, saw malaria not as an environmental problem, but one caused by the neglectful, indifferent, and lazy lifestyles of the natives, whose watering holes and leaky irrigation ditches were ideal places for mosquitoes to breed. The Zionists' goal was to drain the swamps and pools of water to eradicate the disease, thereby expanding the land available for settlement and agricultural production. As the author notes, in many parts of world European settlers made this connection between disease eradication, immigration, and settlement. When the Zionists drained the swamps they also reduced the pasture land long used by Bedouins and other Arab agriculturalists for grazing their livestock. Despite stiff resistance, land formerly held collectively by Palestinian Arabs became private land owned by Zionist settlers.

Evil Zionists eradicating malaria were really oppressing the Arabs whose lives they were saving.

That is a hell of a take.

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02/05 Links Pt1: Palestinian ‘right of return’ is really about ending Israel's existence; Giving the Palestinians a dose of 'reality therapy'; PA must halt pay-for-slay policy for ‘peace and prosperity’

From Ian:

Palestinian ‘right of return’ is really about ending Israel's existence

According to UNRWA, any Palestinian Arab descendants from the 1948 conflict are considered “refugees” until they “return” to Israel.

Thanks to this dubious definition, UNRWA considers there to be more than 5.3 million “Palestinian refugees” who have a “right to return.” In an Oct. 28, 2018, speech, PA President Mahmoud Abbas even claimed that there were 6 million. The actual number of surviving refugees from the 1948 war is closer to 30,000, according to an unreleased State Department report.

Demanding that 6 million Palestinian “refugees” have a “right” to "return" to a place where most of them never lived runs counter to Palestinian claims that they want to have their own independent state. As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis noted in the Washington Post, this demand negates the idea of Palestinian statehood — unless that state means, by its definition, the demographic end of the Jewish nation of Israel. As the American Jewish International Relations Institute observed, such a move would "end the existence of the majority-Jewish state" in Israel.

In their unguarded moments, Palestinian leaders and their state-controlled media have said as much. Palestinian Media Watch, which monitors Arab media in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has highlighted that official PA television promotes the “right of return” by showing a map of “Palestine” that simply erases Israel. PA-approved textbooks also hail that demand.

Defenders of the “right of return” often cite U.N. General Assembly Resolutions 194 and 394 and Security Council Resolution 224 to buttress their claims. But the Arab states voted against 194 in part because it did not establish a “right to return.” Indeed, it only “recommended” that original refugees from the conflict, not descendants, be permitted to return, and only after they agree to live “at peace with their neighbors.” (It should also be noted, as the late historian Martin Gilbert has documented, that these resolutions can be applied to the Jewish refugees as well.)

For decades, Palestinian leaders have rejected offers for statehood and peace while citing a “right” that doesn’t exist. Both the press and policymakers should speak honestly and openly about what it would truly mean and perhaps reflect on why Palestinian leaders continue to demand it.

David Singer: Trump Plan to end Jewish-Arab Conflict sees PLO implode

Jordan and Israel are the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine – currently exercising sovereignty in 95% of former Palestine. Sovereignty in the remaining 5% – Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza – remains undetermined.

The PLO refusal to negotiate with Israel on the Trump plan - will have the following results:
· No second Arab state - in addition to Jordan – will be created in former Palestine
· US$50 billion in development aid will not be required to build and develop that new State
· Gaza and the West Bank will remain politically divided

Jordan should now replace the PLO in negotiations with Israel on Trump’s plan because:
· Jordan was the last sovereign Arab state to occupy the West Bank between 1948 and 1967 when the PLO expressly rejected any claim to sovereignty.
· Jordan conferred Jordanian citizenship on the Arab residents of the West Bank between 1950 and 1988
· The 1994 Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty will ensure good-faith – not confrontational – negotiations

The areas designated for A Future State of Palestine in the Trump Plan (pictured below) now become possible areas for transfer to Jordanian sovereignty in negotiations with Israel.

Successful Israel-Jordan negotiations would be a real game changer – holding out great prospects that the long-running Jewish-Arab conflict could finally be achieved.

Failure by Jordan to negotiate with Israel could see Israel extend its sovereignty to all of Area C in the West Bank.

President Trump needs to phone King Abdullah of Jordan and persuade him to embrace Trump’s “deal of the century”.

The PLO has blown its chance to do so.

PA must halt pay-for-slay policy for ‘peace and prosperity’ - analysis

Palestinian incentivization and the rewarding of terrorists would come to a halt if the “Deal of the Century” is implemented.
The “Peace for Prosperity” plan mentions the need for the Palestinian Authority to cease its “pay-for-slay” terrorism-funding program in four different instances – as much as or even more than the plan refers to Israeli sovereignty over Area C settlements or security.

“This is obviously a major obstacle to peace,” said Maurice Hirsch, director of legal strategies for the Israeli watchdog Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). “The antithesis of peace is taking money to reward terrorists for being terrorists. Terrorism undermines peace. You cannot have a state that rewards terrorism – this is something contradictory to the whole world order.”

On pages 4, 34, 43 and 51 of the 181-page peace plan, the Trump administration makes clear that the PA’s law “incentivizes terrorism… Billions of dollars have been squandered and investment is unable to flow into these areas to allow the Palestinians to thrive.

“The Palestinians shall have ended all programs… that serve to incite or promote hatred and antagonism toward its neighbors, or which compensate or incentivize criminal or violent activity,” the document says.

PMW: Animated video of real murder of Israelis - on social network popular among children

An animated video that encourages murdering Israelis by showing graphic recreated scenes of real terror attacks has appeared on TikTok – a social network popular among children, where users can create and share short videos.

The video shows four lethal terror attacks that were committed against Israelis – a terrorist who rammed his car into Israelis at a Jerusalem light rail station, another who shot at Israeli police, and two stabbers. An eagle – possibly symbolizing the eagle in the emblem used by the Palestinian Authority and the PLO – flies above the carnage throughout the video, at one point moving in unison with 19-year-old Palestinian terrorist Muhannad Halabi as he stabs a religious Jew in the Old City of Jerusalem. The video carries the text “Jerusalem is the dread of the Jews," followed by a red heart.

The following are screenshots from the animation paired with details of the Palestinian terrorists and the attacks they apparently portray:

Car ramming attack: Palestinian terrorist and Hamas member Ibrahim Al-Akari from East Jerusalem deliberately ran over several Israelis with a white van at a light-rail station in Jerusalem on Nov. 5, 2014, murdering Jidan Assad, 38, and Shalom Aharon Badani, 17, and wounding at least 13 others. The terrorist was shot and killed by Israeli police officers who arrived on the scene.

Stabbing attack: 19-year-old Palestinian terrorist Muhannad Halabi murdered 2 Israelis, Rabbi Nehemiah Lavi and Aharon Bennett, and injured Bennett’s wife, Adele, and their 2-year-old son in a stabbing attack in the Old City of Jerusalem on Oct. 3, 2015. Following the attack, the terrorist was shot and killed by Israeli security forces.

Ma'an reports that the European Union and Denmark have provided about 6 million euros to implement 16 social and service infrastructure projects in Area C.

The funded projects include schools, roads, multi-purpose buildings, water distribution networks, water tanks, and repair of electrical networks.

With this contribution, the total value of the program for this year amounts to 15.2 million euros, funded by the European Union and its member states.

EU funds buildings in Area C that are illegal under existing international agreements during the Oslo process. It justifies this by pretending that those agreements don't apply anymore:

According to the Oslo agreements, Israel was to retain control over law enforcement, planning and construction for an interim period of 5 years ending in 1998.

But if the EU considers the interim period agreements to not be valid anymore, that means that they should shun cooperating with the Palestinian Authority, whose existence was an integral part of the interim agreement and not meant to be permanent. Yet they work with the PA in deciding where to pour their Area C (and "East Jerusalem) money.

Furthermore, if the EU considers Area C to be occupied by Israel, then zoning and building activities there are the sole responsibility of the occupying power according to international law.

In short, the EU is violating international law no matter which way you look at it.

A recent example is that the EU funded a school, built by the PA, in the middle of the Nahal Macocha Nature Reserve on state land.

The EU justifies its illegal activities by saying things like "While Israel has overall security and administrative responsibility in Area C, under international law Israel also has the obligation to protect and facilitate development for the local population, and to grant unimpeded access for humanitarian assistance. " It also officially considers all of Area C to be "occupied Palestinian territory" even as it says, at the same time, that "unresolved final status issues must be decided through direct negotiations between both parties [which includes] he issues related to borders."

Somehow, specific parts of the Oslo Accords that the EU doesn't like are considered temporary. Other parts are considered permanent. The armistice lines of 1949 that were never meant to be borders are considered permanent to the EU, and they are considered borders for a non-existent state which magically transitioned from "Jewish homeland" and "British mandate" through an illegal annexation by Jordan to "Palestinian" without anyone being able to point to any legal support for such a transfer of ownership.

No one is saying that the EU cannot petition Israel to allow more Palestinian building in Area C. But the Palestinians are knowingly moving people into the area all the time to assert rights that they don't have, and the EU is considering these squatters to be legal residents that they must support. They are quite aware of this fiction just as they are aware that the buildings they fund violate international law. Yet they claim that they are somehow allowed to do these illegal activities because of some sort of higher "humanitarian imperative" that goes beyond international law.

There is no humanitarian imperative to set up schools for brand new slipshod and haphazard housing of squatters who just moved there from real homes in Areas A and B.

This is not how international law works. This is politics.

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From the Jerusalem Post:

Eden Alene became the first Israeli of Ethiopian descent chosen to represent Israel at Eurovision when she won The Next Star for Eurovision 2020 competition Tuesday night.

“I’m so happy and incredibly emotional, I wanted this so much,” she said in an interview with Channel 12’s Nadav Bornstein following her victory. "It is a great honor for me. This is my country and it is amazing that an Ethiopian will represent the country for the first time."

Alene was raised in Jerusalem's Katamonim neighborhood by a single mother who immigrated from Ethiopia, and later moved with her family to Kiryat Gat. “My poor mother, she had a hard time taking it in. She collapsed in my arms,” Alene, 19, said on The Morning News show.

Alene was the winner of the third season of Israel's X-Factor 2018.

Which makes her a wonderful addition to the continuing "Apartheid?" poster series.

Here are a couple of others I have not yet posted:

I didn't realize that I had made one for Eden when she won X-Factor:

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The Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nasser Bourita, defended his cautious optimism about the "Peace to Prosperity" plan.

"The Kingdom appreciates the peace efforts made by the administration of US President Donald Trump after noting that Washington is for the first time talking about the two-state solution," he said, adding that "the Palestinians have the right to accept or reject the deal," and saying: "We must not be more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves. "

In his answer to harsh criticism from members of the Justice and Development Party, who said the Palestinian issue is the first national issue for Moroccans, Bouraita sharply rebuked them. He said "the first issue of Moroccan diplomacy is the issue of the Moroccan Sahara."

This is, of course, the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, where two thirds of the residents would be considered illegal settlers if they were Jews, and Morocco's claim over the area would be considered illegal annexation if it was done by Israel.

No one, of course, talks about Morocco violating the Geneva Conventions. Because certain international laws seem to be used only against the Jewish state and ignored elsewhere - meaning that they are really not international law.

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02/04 Links Pt2: 80 percent of US Jews say they are pro-Israel; Melanie Phillips: Britain is losing the fight against extremism; Israel Comes Full Circle with Sudan

From Ian:

80 percent of US Jews say they are pro-Israel, study finds

The overwhelming majority of American Jews describe themselves as pro-Israel, and similar numbers say their attachment to Israel is as strong or stronger than it was five years ago, according to a new survey.

The poll, conducted for the Ruderman Family Foundation by the Mellman Group on a sample of 2,500 US Jews, found that more than half of the respondents defined themselves as pro-Israel but also critical of Israeli policy.

According to the survey, eight out of 10 Jews identified themselves as “pro-Israel,” and two-thirds (67%) said they were “attached” or “very attached” to Israel on an emotional level.

Additionally, more than 70% of the respondents said their personal relationship with Israel is the same or stronger than it was five years ago.
Although 80% identified as pro-Israel, more than half of American Jews, some 57%, identified as “pro-Israel but also critical of Israeli policy.”

There was a split between those who are critical of “some” policies (28%) and those critical of “many” policies (29%).
Less than a quarter (23%) are “pro-Israel and supportive of the current Israeli government policies.”

Melanie Phillips: Britain is losing the fight against extremism

For the second time in just over two months, terrorism on Britain’s streets has descended into lethal farce. On Sunday Sudesh Amman, an Islamist who had just been released from prison even though he was considered so dangerous that he was being shadowed by armed police officers, seized a knife from a shop in Streatham and stabbed two people before those officers shot him dead.

Last November Usman Khan, an Islamist released from prison 11 months earlier, murdered two people at a conference that he was attending on London Bridge organised by a prisoners’ rehabilitation project.

This provoked much head-shaking about the risks of letting terrorists out of jail too early and accepting too easily that they’d been de-radicalised. Now, some are saying we can’t go on like this.

Easier said than done. For what’s required is a step-change in attitudes which Britain has been unwilling to make.

For all the evidence suggests that de-radicalisation programmes both inside and outside prison are singularly ineffectual. That’s not just because of the chaos in the under-resourced prison and probation system. It’s because of a conceptual error: the belief that the power of reason can be used against fanatics who believe in killing infidels and “martyring” themselves in the name of God, and wear mocked-up bomb-belts to encourage the police to kill them.

Islam’s history features holy war and conquest, punctuated over the centuries by attempts at enlightenment and reformation that were suppressed. So could it be that these charismatic prisoners, who further radicalise other Muslim inmates, are more faithful to Islam than the hapless imams sent in to persuade them of the error of their ways?

MEMRI: Egyptian Liberal: Britain, Which Shelters And Cultivates Islamic Extremists, Shouldn't Be Surprised To Find Itself A Target Of Terror

On February 2, 2020, a 20-year-old named Sudesh Amman perpetrated a stabbing attack in London, injuring three people. Amman had been released from prison several days earlier, after serving three years on terrorism charges. This attack bears a close resemblance to the November 29, 2019 London Bridge attack, perpetrated by Usman Khan, also a released prisoner who had been jailed for involvement in terror.

Following the London Bridge attack, in which two people were killed, Egyptian liberal journalist Khaled Montasser published an article titled "Can a Terrorist Repent." In it, he wrote that terrorists are incapable of repenting since they are motivated by extremist ideas such as a rejection of nation-states, isolation from society and a desire to establish the Islamic Caliphate, and they rejoice at terror attacks perpetrated by Muslims in the West. He accused Europe, and especially Britain, of sheltering and cultivating Islamic extremists, including Salafis and activists of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is supported by Qatar, and allowing them to establish unsupervised schools and religious centers that become "bastions of backwardness" and "incubators of terror and extremism." He therefore urged Europe and Britain to wake up before they are overrun by the extremists and become extinct.

The following are translated excerpts from his article:[1]
"London woke up to a disaster: British police confirm that two people were killed and three were wounded in a stabbing attack against passersby near London Bridge on Friday [November 29, 2019]... The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: 'We will not let terror threaten our city and our unity... or disrupt our daily lives.'[2]

"I [regret to] inform you, dear Mr. Mayor, that you are deluded. These people will threaten your city whether you like it or not, and take your daily lives back to the stone age if you continue to delude yourself that the scorpion will carry the frog on its back and bring it safely to the shore.

The artist for the grotesque, antisemitic cartoon shown above is Portuguese cartoonist Vasco Gargalo. He has a history of such antisemitic cartoons; he also entered in Holocaust cartoon contests from Iran.

Gargalo received an award entitled "Prix Plumes libres pour la démocratie" from the magazine "Courrier International" and the City of Strasbourg last November.

Gargalo has quite an oeuvre.

Even an Israeli winning Eurovision was too much for him to stomach. Because all Israeli Jews are evil and they must not win international competitions.

Yeah, he's an antisemite.

The president of B'nai Brith France, Phillipe Meyer reacted by calling the award an "aberration, provocation, infamy." As soon as this was publicized last week there were other strong condemnations.

Finally, the magazine and City of Strasbourg withdrew the reward, calling the Nazi cartoon above "heinous" and saying that had they known about the cartoons, they would never have awarded the prize.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

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Cratersky, a Yemeni news site, says that it has the solution to the Middle East conflict:

Ethnically cleanse the Jews from the region and send them all to Birobidzhan, the Soviet Union's old "Jewish Autonomous Oblast" in far-eastern Russia on the Chinese border.

The writer, Mansour Al-Alhi, helpfully adds that the thousand Jews who still live there from the old days already speak the language of the Jews - Yiddish.

In case you aren't 100% certain that a plan to expel all Jews from the Middle East is antisemitic, Al-Alhi also says, "And the American pig and the Israeli monkey must think about a just plan to deport their Jews from the Arab lands in peace before they are deported by the sword."

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02/04 Links Pt1: The U.S. Peace Plan: A Return to the Rabin Doctrine of Defensible Borders; PA official: Whoever accepts Trump’s peace plan - "the filth of the century"

From Ian:

Einat Wilf: How Trump's peace plan can strengthen Arab-Israeli relations

There is growing evidence of decreased willingness to place the Palestinian cause above domestic Arab interests. Voices that in the past would have never been heard in the Arab world now appear on local Arab television and social media, questioning why their countries continue to hitch their wagons to the Palestinians, who are prone to rejecting compromise. In some cases, these voices even express open support for Israel.

In the past, Palestinians could generally count on the Arab countries — not just to openly fight wars for their cause, as they did in 1948 and 1967, but to stand firmly behind them, accepting what the Palestinians accept and rejecting what the Palestinians reject. This is no longer the case.

So although the Palestinians were still able to rally the Arab League — a group of Arab countries, which is already a shadow of its former powerful self — to join in their rejection of Trump’s plan, their isolation in the Arab world is growing more apparent.

This is the most important aspect, and the greatest news, to come out of the plan’s introduction. Not only does the plan reflect the political preferences of the vast majority of Israel’s Jews — with the Likud, Blue and White and Israel Beiteinu parties endorsing the plan — but it has been cautiously welcomed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar as at least a legitimate basis for negotiations.

It also makes vital regional cooperation more likely to continue and strengthen over time.

Israel, for its part, must endorse and adopt the plan in its entirety if it is to serve as a framework that enables the Gulf countries to pursue ever closer cooperation with Israel. It is crucial that even if Israel ultimately annexes the territory designated for Israel in the plan, it does so while making it clear that the remaining territory, assigned in the plan to a Palestinian state, would not be annexed and will be kept for a future Palestinian state.

It is tempting to ridicule the American president’s vision, but the plan does offer the prospect of greater peace and prosperity for Israel — at least in relation to those in the greater Arab world that accepts its presence. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

Barry Shaw: Basic Middle East facts

The Middle East is characterized by the following 14-century-old intra-Muslim features which can be summed up as:

No intra-Muslim peaceful coexistence, but constant unpredictability, instability, religious and ethnic fragmentation, violent intolerance, terrorism, subversion, and a drive to fulfill Islam-driven goals including the unacceptance of an “infidel” entity in the “abode of Islam.”

Most of the Middle East is not driven by a desire to improve its standard of living, but by religious/ideological visions.

Western imposed concessions, appeasement and gestures actually embolden them to more aggression and terrorism.

The assumption that a Palestinian Arab state could be effectively demilitarized and de-terrorized should be assessed against the track record of the Palestinian Arabs themselves.

The 1993 Oslo Accord and the 2005 Gaza Disengagement were supposed to demilitarize and de-terrorize the Palestinians in return for dramatically enhanced political and economic benefits. Instead, both events intensified terrorism in a dramatic manner.

A direct correlation exists between the degree of Palestinian Arab sovereignty and the level of Palestinian terrorism. For example, in 1968-70, Jordan provided the Palestinian Arabs with an unprecedented platform of operation. Consequently, they triggered a civil war, attempting to topple the pro-US Hashemite regime.

Noah Rothman: You’re Going to Be Hearing a Lot More About Syria Soon

At the end of 2019, just after the Trump administration announced withdrawal from Syria, Operation Inherent Resolve’s commanders estimated that ISIS maintained only about 2,000 fighters in the Middle Euphrates River Valley. But while ISIS-backed attacks on coalition positions continued and anti-ISIS airstrikes were ongoing, this paltry force was “not enough” to make “significant or lasting gains.” The balance has since shifted in this terrorist organization’s favor.

Last week, the United Nations Security Council revealed that ISIS is reconstituting itself under new leadership. The group has again begun mounting “bold insurgent attacks” against both Western and Syrian government positions in Iraq and Syria’s poorly policed border areas. The UN mission’s findings dovetail with the assessment of U.S. Special Representative for Syria Ambassador James Jeffrey, who painted a similarly grim picture on January 30. “[W]e are seeing ISIS come back as an insurgency, as a terrorist operation, with some 14- to 18,000 terrorists between Syria and Iraq,” he told reporters at the State Department. With thousands of new fighters and an estimated $100 million in the bank, ISIS has begun retaking control of territory that once briefly constituted the Islamic State caliphate.

American voters have never been fond of U.S. obligations in Syria, but why would they be? When confronting the threats brooding in that near-lawless state, U.S. lawmakers have routinely led with the reasons why America should not engage in this contest. From Barack Obama’s September 10, 2013, primetime address to Donald Trump’s October 2019 tweets disparaging the American mission, the public is routinely bombarded with the reasons why America, the world’s only superpower, must avoid the Syrian entanglement.

It’s no wonder those voters might be confused as to why those same policymakers have subordinated their objections to the imperative of defending U.S. interests in Syria. America’s political class has never had enough faith in the voting public to level with them about what’s at stake. But Western interests in Syria did not cease to exist. Indeed, those interests seem increasingly imperiled by unabated violence and political chaos in the Levant. If Syria’s trajectory continues along its present course, Americans are going to be hearing a lot more about it. And soon.

1934 survey of Palestine showed how Jews helped Arabs; Arabs flocked to live near Jewish areas

I had seen similar reports but this specific one is new to me.

It shows that Arabs flocked to Palestine because of Jewish economic success, and that there was essentially no negative effects of Jewish immigration.

Arab villages near Jewish population centers were shown to have improved in every way compared to the villages further away, which looked as they were a hundred years beforehand.

Similarly, Arab houses near Jewish communities went up in value, those further away lost value.

Some of it is a little hard to read, and most of it was not digitized.

From JTA, January 31, 1934:

The rest of it is in the JTA digital archives:

The beneficial effect of Jewish immigration is reflected not only in modernized Arab agriculture, but also in a remarkable expansion of Arab urban settlements. The 1931 government census shows a great increase in Arab population in the cities, with a resulting rise in building, commericial and industrial activities. On the other hand, in Arab centers removed from Jewish influence real estate and improvements have shrunk in value.

ARABS SWARM HOLY LAND“The most convincing proof of the economic improvement experienced by the Arabs is the fact that formerly thousands of Arabs emigrated annually. Today Arab immigrants are drawn to Palestine from other countries. Between the censuses of 1922 and 1931 the Arab population grew by 225,000, or forty percent. A further illustration is the sharp reduction in the number of nomadic Arabs. These inveterate wanderers of the desert cannot resist the powerful attraction of the thriving urban and rural settlements where the opportunities for labor are, due to Jewish enterprise, plentiful.

“Moreover, the benefits from Jewish immigration are not exclusively of an economic nature. Practically the entire government appropriation for education goes toward the maintenance of Arab schools. The Jews support their educational system from private funds. As a result illiteracy is disappearing among the Arabs. Of even greater benefit to the Arabs have been the Jewish medical services. The prevalence of trachoma, malaria, enteric diseases and typhoid has shown a steady decline in the last decade.

A LABOR SHORTAGE“Not only is Jewish immigration being speedily absorbed, but there is a shortage of labor, both Arab and Jewish necessitating the importation of Jewish immigration has resulted in an increase of the number of Arab industrial workers. From 1924 to 1928 their numbers rose by about 6,000, of whom 2,000 were employed in Jewish enterprises, representing twenty percent of the employees of Jewish capital, while the Arabs employ practically no Jews.”

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Who says Palestinians are inherently violent? Palestinians! (and their "allies")

I was struck by this paragraph in a Vox article by an American of Palestinian descent, Hanna Alshaikh, whining about the "Peace to Prosperity" plan:

To hear Trump’s condescending, hateful remarks that promulgate a narrative that Palestinians are inherently violent and will only change if the United States and Israel unlock their “extraordinary potential” is insulting.

Here's is where Trump uses the term "extraordinary potential:"

During my trip to Israel, I also met with Palestinian President Abbas in Bethlehem. I was saddened by the fate of the Palestinian people. They deserve a far better life. They deserve the chance to achieve their extraordinary potential. Palestinians have been trapped in a cycle of terrorism, poverty, and violence, exploited by those seeking to use them as pawns to advance terrorism and extremism.

Is that condescending - or accurate?

Any unbiased reading of Trump's words show that he is saying that Palestinian Arabs are caught in a terrible situation not of their own making, but by their leaders.

The idea that Palestinians are inherently violent is not part of Trump's speech.

It is part of the Palestinian narrative itself. And it is a major part of the narrative of supposed "friends" of Palestinians.

After all, the very logo of the Fatah movement shows an automatic weapon, a rifle and a hand grenade (besides a map of "Palestine" that excludes all of Israel and the word "storm" in large letters:)

Palestinian heroes are terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi - people who have schools named after them.

Palestinian children learn from birth how wonderful "martyrdom" is. Official Palestinian TV hammers home the theme of children sacrificing themselves to kill Jews.

Supposed "friends" of Palestinians also tell the world that Palestinians are expected to be violent when something happens that they don't like. Here's an example from yesterday, but there are hundreds of examples of leftist and liberal Europeans and Americans and fellow Arabs who "warn" that Israel or the US cannot do something because it will result in Palestinian violence and terror.

But the most ironic example of all is that the author Hanna Alshaikh herself:

Coming of age in the Oslo era, I saw how these so-called “peace” plans only paid lip service to Palestinian self-determination without addressing the core problems of their suffering, and how their failure usually ended in victim-blaming — which Trump and his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, the architect of the administration’s grand plan, have regurgitated.

What followed was the Second Intifada, or “uprising,” a reaction to the world’s indifference to their struggle and the futility of plans like Oslo. Watching the news as a child, images of the ensuing violence were seared in my memory, offering my generation’s Palestinian diaspora a visualization of what we are up against as a people.

It was the first time many of us understood what it meant to be Palestinian: our love for each other, our love for freedom, and our grief over the loss of our compatriots, of futures stolen from our youth, the trauma we see in the eyes of our parents and grandparents.

Alshaikh is romanticizing the suicide bombs, the Jewish body parts hurled over the streets of Israel, the pizza shop and Passover seder and discotheque bombings, as a critical part of her own Palestinian identity!

Her love of violence is a part of her very identity as a Palestinian!

The only people who say that Palestinians have free choice to reject violence are the Israelis and the pro-Israel voices like Donald Trump's. The bitter irony is that the people that Palestinian voices consider condescending and hateful are the only ones who can articulate a vision of Palestinians who reject violence as part of their culture and who can live with Israelis not as enemies but as friends, eventually.

Such a vision would require authentic Palestinian Arab voices to be heard. The people who interact with Israeli Jews (sadly, since the first intifada, this only happens in very limited situations.) The majority of Palestinians who are disgusted by their leadership and their unwillingness to even consider real peace. The ones who look over the border and see their fellow Arabs in Israel prosper as doctors, pharmacists and high tech workers, working together with Jews every day.

The Palestinian Authority has been working hard to silence the voices of Palestinians who truly want peace. So have self-appointed spokespeople for Palestinians like Hanna Alshaikh. And they have been largely successful.

I'm sad that the village that Alshaikh's grandparents lived in, near the 1949 armistice lines, was torn down in 1967. There are two sides to the story - it was done to allow Israeli Jews to have safe passage to Jerusalem without fear of Arab ambushes. Alshaikh and her Palestinian compatriots are not interested in the world knowing that there are legitimate Israeli security concerns as well. The topic is worthy of debate, not a one-sided condemnation.

People who want peace listen to the other side's perspective. Unfortunately, for the most part the Palestinian side simply wants to spout propaganda about how evil Israel is, not to actually engage in dialogue for peace. (Look for a single pro-Israel or anti-Abbas op-ed in any Palestinian media in the West Bank, and compare with the op-eds that are pro-Palestinian in Israeli media.)

In the end it is Israel that wants peace, and the Palestinians who are indoctrinated into a mindset of conquering Israel. This article proves it yet again. Until the Palestinians who truly want peace and dialogue are empowered - which is one major component of the Peace to Prosperity plan - people like Alshaikh will do everything they can to thwart peace, and to justify their rejectionism with high-sounding principles.

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It was a REALLY bad day for Palestinian leaders, with news from Uganda to Sudan to a video of Palestinian girls dancing with IDF soldiers (updated)

Monday was a really bad day for Palestinian leaders.

Not only did Netanyahu meet with Ugandan leaders and it appears that Israel and Uganda will establish diplomatic relations, Uganda's president said he would consider opening up his embassy in Jerusalem if/when it happens.

Saeb Erekat denounced the idea of a Jerusalem embassy.

Then, Bibi met with the president of Sudan, which is a huge shift for Sudan.

Erekat said the meeting was a "stab in the back" for Palestinians. Fatah's Jibril Rajoub condemned the meeting.

Then there was news that Israel is trying to strike a deal to establish diplomatic relations with Morocco.

But perhaps the worst was this event.

Edy Cohen, an Israeli journalist, upset many Arabs by posting a video of what he said was Palestinian girls dancing with IDF soldiers.

His tweet, in Arabic, said, "What makes me laugh the most is that the Palestinians dance with us in bars at night, and in the day they fool the (rest of the) Arabs, saying “You sold (out) the (Palestinian) cause, where are the millions (of Arabs coming to aid the Palestinians)?”

The song being played (probably overdubbed) includes lyrics like, "“Where are the Arab people?”, “Where are the millions?”, “Where is the Arab anger?”, “Where is the Arab honor?”“The sons of whores are relaxing while millions are miserable, there is a submachine gun in my heart that asks ‘Where are my (Arab) brothers’?” It is a song accusing Arabs of leaving the Palestinians in the lurch.

Among the people upset over this video was Prince Abdul Rahman bin Mosaed bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who said it wasn't funny, adding "The question of the Palestinians is our cause and you are an occupier of the state of Palestine and our position will not change from your insults or obscene scenes from some misleaders or haters of Palestinians."

It is one thing for Palestinians to see Arab countries act in their own self-interest and align themselves with Israel. But to see their own daughters dance with the hated IDF?

That must really sting.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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02/03 Links Pt2: #WeRemember: So should our journalists; Rise of far Right not the main source of antisemitism in Europe; Corbyn’s place in the history of antisemitism

From Ian:

‘#WeRemember: So should our journalists’

The leaders of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement against Israel make clear that their purpose is not peaceful change but the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state, based on a double standard they do not apply to any other country. This squarely fits the international definition of antisemitism. Yet when reporting on BDS-related events, mainstream journalists rarely include this critical context, misleadingly casting the group as a peaceful protest movement.

When Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was denied entry to Israel in August 2019, most media painted her as a mainstream Democrat who happens to be critical of Israel, and omitted essential context: Just months earlier her own party had led the passage of House Resolution 241, “Condemning the antisemitic comments of Representative Ilhan Omar from Minnesota.”

Most media have been reasonably effective in providing context about the neo-Nazi and white supremacist backgrounds behind California synagogue shooter Robert Brewer and Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers, yet most failed to disclose that David N. Anderson, who shot and killed shoppers at a New Jersey kosher deli last month, was apparently inspired by recordings of the antisemitic preacher Louis Farrakhan.

Is it then any surprise that during this week’s ceremonies the BBC’s Orla Guerin equated Israel with Nazi Germany while reporting from Yad Vashem, Israel’s own Holocaust museum?

It is both the beauty and burden of the free world that hate preachers like Farrakhan, extremist organizations like the neo-Nazi and BDS movements, and fringe politicians like Ilhan Omar, have a right to express antisemitic views, as long as they don’t cross the line into the very specifically defined legal categories of incitement or defamation. However, the public should never mistake such hateful extremists for being “mainstream” or “reasonable,” and the free press has a professional duty to provide this context.

The late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis beautifully expressed the American philosophy: “To expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

In a healthy society, free speech cannot stand on its own, but demands even more free speech in the form of context, fact-checking and rebuttals. The result is that our safety as a society depends not only on politicians, judges and police, but also on the ethics and professionalism of our journalists.

Jeremy Corbyn’s place in the history of antisemitism

FARRAKHAN echoed Nazi language when he used the word “termites” to describe Jews. Farrakhan has said that “satanic Jews had infected the modern world with poison and deceit.” He has called Jews “poisoners and absolute evil.”

One only has to put these statements next to the most common definition of antisemitism – that of the International Holocaust Remembrance (IHRA) – to understand that Farrakhan is an antisemite. One can do the same with British politicians who are (part-time) antisemites such as George Galloway and Lady Tonge.

Doing so with statements and acts of Corbyn doesn’t get us very far. His antisemitism is greatly different, yet far more important than Farrakhan’s in view of the position he holds. That the act of calling two Arab movements which aim to commit genocide against Jews his “brothers” and “friends” is hugely antisemitic requires little explanation. Yet none of the definitions of antisemitism includes explicitly such extreme cases.

Upon becoming Labour chairman, Corbyn almost immediately appointed the Hamas supporter Seumas Milne as executive director of strategy and communications. His leadership led rapidly to an explosion of antisemitic statements by various elected party officials.

Corbyn nominally condemned antisemitism, yet Labour greatly underperformed in dealing with the complaints about it. From a BBC Panorama program one learned that he and his immediate staff even protected people who had made antisemitic remarks.

In order to understand Corbyn’s huge contribution to the contemporary history of antisemitism, one has to comprehend a basic issue about current times that are known as “post-modernity.” In it, many themes have fragmented in a multitude of tiny parts.

So has antisemitism. To define Corbyn’s antisemitism one can best say that he is a major post-modern antisemite, which expresses itself through many diverse acts and statements. Scholars of antisemitism will have to familiarize themselves with this new concept as it is recurring.

Corbyn’s indirect antisemitic impact is far larger than seems from the above. Telegraph columnist Zoe Strimpel, who is Jewish, recently wrote about the British chattering classes, “What no dinner party-attending Jewish person can now avoid noticing is that at elite social gatherings in Britain and the US, dressing up brazen antisemitism as a form of political morality has become cool, acceptable and easy.” Jeremy Corbyn is indirectly to a substantial extent at the origins of this disastrous development in the UK.

Stand With Us: Rabbi Sacks Speaking Out on Antisemitism

Rabbi Sacks Speaking Out on Antisemitism - We were thrilled to receive and screen this video message from the much-respected former British Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks at our International Conference.

Rise of far Right not the main source of antisemitism in Europe – study

The rise of the far Right in Western Europe is not the primary source of antisemitism in the region in recent years, a study from the World Zionist Organization’s Institute for Zionist Strategies found.

“The rise of the extreme right and antisemitism: Three European case studies” focuses on France, England and Germany, which have the largest Jewish populations on the continent, examining whether there is a correlation between the deterioration in those communities’ security and the rise of far-right parties.

The Institute for Zionist Strategies is a nonpartisan research institution dedicated to preserving Israel as a Jewish and democratic state in the spirit of Israel’s Declaration of Independence.

Researcher Nicolas Nisim Touboul studied two variables in each country: the electoral growth of right-wing parties, and the trends in levels of antisemitism.

There were several notable attacks in France in the past decade, including the murder of a teacher and three pupils at the Otzar HaTorah school in Toulouse in 2012 and the murder of four in the attack on the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris in 2015. However, there was no clear trend of rising antisemitism in that time, with spikes in some years and a decrease in others. In 2003-2010, there were an average of 560 antisemitic incidents per year, and in 2011-2019 there were 444, according to official French records.

In 2011, Marine Le Pen won the leadership of the far-right National Front and it subsequently grew in electoral power. Touboul noted that the party rejected antisemitism, which “can be suspected to be a strategic decision to normalize the party,” but was serious enough that Le Pen expelled officials who made antisemitic statements, including her father, party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Spikes in antisemitism in France mostly coincided with Israeli military operations. For example, 29% of violent antisemitic incidents in 2009 happened in January, during Operation Cast Lead, and 24% of them in 2014 were in July, during Operation Protective Edge.

Overall, the report found that increases in antisemitic violence were more likely to be motivated by anti-Israel sentiment or radical Islam than far-right views in France over the last decade.